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Does Your Community Offer What Startups Need? Adriana Herrera Discusses Her Experience in San Diego

In her weekly blog posts for the New York Times Small Business, Fashioning Change CEO, Adriana Herrera gives an inside look into the challenges many young startups face. From learning to code to earning a co-founder, she shares insights from her own experiences as the Founder of a fashion-focused social enterprise startup in San Diego.

This week Adriana got a little more personal, focusing on the pros and cons of starting up in her native Southern California. A graduate of the San Diego Founder Institute (where she was the only female founder), Adriana explains how her participation and continued involvement with the FI community propelled Fashioning Change forward.

“The program was like drinking from a fire hose” she says, “It was tough... but the experience was invaluable and connected me to a network of brilliant advisors and mentors that taught me what I needed to know to get Fashioning Change of the ground”.

She goes on to explain how the relationships formed while in the Institute have proven to be helpful years later and how the program is a great option for female founders. An approach that’s “a head of the curve” in regards to women in tech, Adriana says her experience in the program helped her become more resourceful in a largely patriarchal business community.

If you are interested in starting up in San Diego, register now for Employee to Entrepreneur: Making the leap to Startup Founder happening on Wednesday, April 10th at 5:30pm. Hear from successful startup founders that took the plunge and left the corporate world behind to build their dream companies.

The Founder Institute is the world's largest entrepreneur training and startup launch program, helping aspiring founders across the globe build enduring technology companies. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 50 countries, the Founder Institute has helped launch over 1,563 companies in 5 years. The company's mission is to "Globalize Silicon Valley" and build sustainable startup ecosystems that will create one million new jobs worldwide.